Tag Archives: trivium

Although Soundwave was actually a month ago I’ve been meaning to write a little review of the day, just haven’t had the time. The bill for this years’ festival was pretty astonishing, Slipknot, SOAD, Limp Bizkit, Manson, LOG, Machine Head, Trivium, Mastodon and many, many more. I checked out a few bands on the day, but I did sadly miss one of the bands I was looking forward to the most, Steel Panther. Alter Bridge were pretty good and were the first band I saw on the day, but I don’t really know their music that well so I wandered over to the metal stage to see who else was playing. It was Meshugga. No doubt Meshugga is an intense band and genre breaking, but I don’t really get it. Nothing about their music really reaches out and grabs me so I wandered some more, saw some fairly lame emo/punk bands then came back to the metal stage to check out In Flames. They are another band who I have been aware of for some time, but havent really listened to their music that closely. Check out my post about their awesome restaurant over at Swedish Metal Restaurant.

After In Flames came on one of my favourite bands, Trivium. This would be the 4th time I have seen Trivium live and I’ve liked them since the Crusade album.They always put on a great show and kicking their set off with their latest album opener In Waves went down very well with the crowd. The next highlight for me was seeing Mastodon, who are managed by my good friend Rick Sales’ company. Rick being there meant we could watch their set from side of stage which was fantastic, they put on a great show. Also, whilst they were playing I was chatting with Willie and John from the mighty Lamb Of God. We had met previously so it was cool to see them again and have a quick chat.

After Mastodon’s set we went back to the dressing room area to chat with the guys, all really cool although I didn’t meet Brent. I have to say also that they are probably one of the tallest bands in metal, true. Chatting with Brann Dailor, drummer for Mastodon and IMHO one of the best drummers in the world right now was super cool. Brann is a very down to earth guy and we hit it off straight away talking about beer. Turns out he is a massive craft beer fan and by the sounds of it a bit of a beer geek like me. Rick told the guys about what we were doing with the wine project and about what we are talking about in regards to beer, so instantly Brann and I started talking beer. It was funny watching the others look at us like we were talking another language and just walk off and leave us to it. I don’t want to ramble on too much here about this but it was very cool to meet someone who had the same taste in beer as I did, who also happens to play drums in one of the coolest bands in metal.

My final and perhaps biggest highlight for the day was seeing the amazing and quite definitely mental Slipknot from the side of stage. I managed to score a special Slipknot Stage Access pass from *cough* Marilyn Manson’s manager *cough*, because without this you were not allowed on the stage area whilst they played. Standing stage left pretty close to Clown and Sid watching them go mental and put on an amazing show was something to behold. The crowd was sick, the band sounded better than ever and I was standing right next to Randy from LOG who was taking pictures the whole time, who also happened to be next to Dave McClain, drummer for Machine Head. It really doesn’t get much more amazing than that for a metal fan like myself. Truly a brilliant day.
I am hopeful that I’ll be able to pull together a brewing/beer project with Mastodon in the future. I plan to reach out to Brann and try to get some feedback and ideas from him, would be really cool I reckon. If you have any ideas/thoughts/musings about a cool beer style that you think would suit Mastodon then please leave a comment and let us know.

Well, that’s quite an essay I would say. Until next time, may your music be LOUD!!

I found this video over at Matt Heafy’s blog kiichichaos.com and I was pretty excited by it. Check out this cool vid of Matt and Anders from Swedish metallers In Flames eating at In Flames’ own restaurant in Gothenburg, Sweden called 2112.

Having followed Matt’s blog for a little while now I know how much of a foodie he is and likes good wine and beer too, plus he’s a rally cool guy. I think it is amazing that the guys from In Flames have opened their own pub/restaurant in their hometown, it really reflects my own goals with Distorted beverages. I’ve had in my mind from the beginning to be able to have a tasting room/bar/pub which served all of our beverages plus great craft beer and premium small producer wines from around the world with really great food. Hopefully that dream will eventually be realised but first things first, I need to get our products out in the marketplace.

On that front, things are moving in the right direction if a little more slowly than I would like, but in the next week or so everything will be much clearer. The Soundwave festival is also starting in Brisbane this weekend and will be here in Adelaide next weekend. It will be a great opportunity for me to meet up with some people I’ve met before and to meet for the first time so other cool musicians. Top of my list are in no particular order:

Machine Head

Mastodon

Steel Panther

Times of Grace

Zakk Wylde

So, there is a lot going on right now and I will have more updates soon.

Like this:

Disturbed is a band I’ve been aware of for a long time, since they hit in the late 90’s really. I liked some of their songs and knew of their bigger hits but didn’t have any of their albums nor had I seen them live. I really didn’t know a great deal about them until in April I got an email from the touring company that was bringing them out to Australia requesting if they could come out to the winery and take a tour and try our wines. The guys from the touring company knew I was a big metal fan so they thought it would be cool for all concerned. Through several emails and phone calls with the band’s manager I met up with David Draiman and Dan Donegan, plus David’s fiancee and others for a lunch at a local restaurant and we then went on to the winery for tastings. David is real wine lover and also quite a foodie from what I could gather and the band obviously enjoyed seeing what the place they were touring in had to offer. The guys very kindly invited me to come to the show the next night and hang out, which I definitely said yes to.

I arrived at the arena a little earlier than the band, but was warmly welcomed by Jason their head of security who’d also come out to the winery the day before. I had full access to the arena and just hung out and watched the support bands. On a side note, the main support act was Trivium who I’ve been a big fan of since their Crusade album and I was really stoked to meet Corey and Mat and have a quick chat. Mat has a great food blog as well, it’s worth checking out.

Disturbed put on a great show, lots of pyro, lots of energy, the crowd was really into it and the band sounded great live. Here is a pretty good quality video from the show that also happens to be my favourite Disturbed song.

Afterwards I got to hang out with the guys in the dressing room area, drink some wine and hear some road stories. I’m not certain why but I had decided to bring along a couple of bottles of one of my home-brewed beers as well as some wine. Dan was particularly curious about it and even though it’s a good beer, one that I was pretty proud of, I was a little sheepish for him to try it. He polished off both bottles and loved it! The beer itself was a pretty simple English style summer ale, brewed with all Maris Otter malt and Kent Goldings hops and he kept giving it to everyone to try and told me several times how much he liked it. Imagine my surprise when a couple of weeks later I get a text message from Dan, saying he wants to get in touch and talk about doing something with the beer. He was so impressed by it that he is keen to work together on producing and releasing a beer sometime in the future. It still blows my mind to think about that, I’m this unknown guy from the Barossa Valley, not a professional brewer, but I guess I’m smart enough to say “Yeah, sure we can do that, it’ll be awesome!”. On reflection I guess my passion for it and my knowledge gained from the wine industry came across to Dan and to be quite honest he was the one guy of all the band that I felt an instant connection to. Sometimes you just meet people and you know that person will be a friend for life.

So, watch this space. I predict exciting and big things to come from this, hopefully in the not to distant future. If you have any suggestions or ideas for a beer that would best represent Disturbed or if you think you have the perfect name for the beer please let me know in the comment section.

To get a good handle on what this blog is about it is important that I provide some backgorund to my new venture. I’ve been involved in the wine industry since 1996 in both Tasmania and South Australia and for the last 6 years in the Barossa Valley. Over the past 3-4 years I have also been an active homebrewer and craft beer lover. I have reviewed over 340 beers at ratebeer.com and enjoyed countless great wines from around Australia and the world. When I was a teenager, around 14-15 I discovered Guns N Roses, this changed my life forever. Suddenly music evoked a lot of emotion in me and I found that I could turn to music to find solace in my teenage angst.

From then on it was a constant rollercoaster of musical discovery, I found bands like REM and Aerosmith then the heavier bands like Metallica and Pantera.It was also at this time that Grunge really took off and I fell in love with Alice In Chains and Soundgarden. Grunge was my new musical taste and I couldn’t get enough of it. However, my heavier side never went away and I was discovering Slayer, Machine Head and others at the same time. Fast forward about 10 years from then andn I was attending every metals show that was touring Adelaide; from Mastodon and Slayer to Machine Head, Trivium, Slipknot and Arch Enemy. One day whilst working at Rockford Wines in the Barossa Valley I met a guy who changed everything.